Of course, his focus changed as soon as Madeline’s water broke, as it should.
I brought his screen to life. It was filled with the compiling data. Along with Nancy’s name, we knew her Social Security number. Of course, that would only work if these transactions were done in a legal manner. If they weren’t legal, our answers wouldn’t be as straightforward.
Taking the coffee, I made my way to my workstation and brought my screens to life, including the one overhead that had continuous feeds from around the city. I pulled up our new feed from Dino’s Liquor store. The last interesting piece from there was a late-night visitor the owner had in the back alley. It wasn’t Jettison and the only exchange appeared to be a liquor deal. The man appeared to buy two kegs of beer. It was Patrick who noticed that the kegs didn’t have taps. That meant either the purchaser had taps of his own, which would be the case with a tavern or bar, or there was something besides beer in those containers.
Mason had Sparrows following up on the license plate. Once the purchaser was found, he’d receive a visit from a few of our men—a follow-up of sorts.
There was nothing unusual I could see as I scanned the different locations throughout the city. Traffic was normal for a Wednesday and the time of day. Businesses were opening. Pedestrians were walking the sidewalks. Even with the autumn chill, the parks were filling with people. Basically, it was a typical day in Chicago and the surrounding neighborhoods.
A few hits of my keyboard and I found myself rotating the cameras and views of the parking lots and parking garage at the Women’s Hospital. It didn’t take long to find the car Garrett drove. All of our cars had trackers. It would be a bad day if some punk ever tried to steal one—bad day for the punk.
The inside of the hospital was under constant surveillance. The system was closed-circuit, meaning it didn’t broadcast and was used in-house. Knowing that Madeline and Araneae would both give birth and that the Women’s Hospital was the best labor-and-delivery hospital in the greater Chicago area and also had a great NICU, we’d made the effort to infiltrate their system in advance.
Because Ruby needed care upon birth, Madeline was adamant about the NICU unit.
With everything happening, it had been a few weeks since I’d run a scan. It would assure me that we were able to still see and hear. It would also confirm what Sparrow had suggested in the elevator—determine that no one else was infiltrating the system, that we were alone in our methods.
My phone vibrated in my pocket with a text message from Patrick. It was brief—a room number and a note that they were settled in the room. I could assume that Mason was given the same information to station the Sparrows as needed.
The Sparrows wouldn’t gain access to the private wing; however, they could monitor the exits and entrances from the outside. There were three such entries. One went to the access hallway, the main entrance to the wing on the fourth floor. The elevators to reach the correct floor were scattered throughout the hospital. A second went straight into the neonatal wing, and a third was the stairwell facilitating the emergency exit.
There weren’t cameras in the hospital rooms, for obvious reasons. I could only see the hallway outside of their room as men and women in scrubs went in and out of the door, letting the door close in their wake. While I couldn’t see within, I did tap into the nurses’ station and gained access to the vitals and other monitors coming from each room. There were only five rooms in this exclusive wing. Two were currently in use.
Subdividing one of my screens, I kept watch right outside their room door as well as the three entrances, including the waiting room and elevator bay near the main entrance. There were two men in that waiting room, not near one another. One was older, much older, the second was a Sparrow. I was ninety-five percent certain.
I sent Mason a text message:
“SEND ME PROFILES ON ALL THE SPARROWS IN THE HOSPITAL.”
My phone vibrated almost immediately.
“WILL DO. GIVE ME FIVE.”
The dark hair caught my attention, probably because most of the medical staff wore coverings over their hair. It was Ruby, stepping out of the room and walking down the hallway.
“Where are you going?” I asked aloud despite the fact